On writing: poetry and prose

November Chapbook Challenge: Lessons Learned

Robert Lee Brewer’s November chapbook challenge has come to an end. Check out the comments section of Robert’s blog for November for all the wonderful poems written by all of us participating writers.http: //blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides

Since I was also participating in NaNoWriMo, In order to not go completely crazy I wrote poems that I hope will be part of the book. They are supposedly written by the ancestor of one of the alien characters in my novel, and thus I wanted them to reflect the moral, spiritual, and ethical viewpoint of the aliens. It ended up being a very rewarding experience. The poems were considerably more “religious” than I would normally allow myself to write, and also contained more metaphoric imagery than I normally find in my poetry. As this lack is something that I have been wanting to address, I find this a particularly interesting development.